Mayoral fight continues as Bell files complaint to ethics board

Surrounded by his family, former city councilman and ex-congressman Chris Bell announces his candidacy for mayor of Houston at the Sam Houston Park﻿ on Sunday. He acknow-ledged the race could get ugly.

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff

Mayoral candidate Chris Bell filed a formal complaint to the Houston Ethics Commission on Wednesday charging that former City Attorney David Feldman overstepped his authority when he granted permission to Rep. Sylvester Turner to raise money for his mayoral bid when other candidates couldn't.

In a six-page complaint, Bell's attorney, Geoffrey Berg, argued that the City Attorney is only allowed to advise city officeholders, which Turner is not. That was a key point of contention in court last month: Feldman replied that since he advised the Houston Ethics Commission — a board that Berg said should interpret campaign finance law for mayoral candidates — he effectively could advise Turner directly.

"I received a simple email from Sylvester Turner," Feldman said as he defended himself in court last month. "I responded with an answer. We do serve our citizens, whether they happen to be state representatives or not."

Turner wrote to Feldman last spring asking whether he could raise money for his unopposed state representative campaign and then transfer that money to a future mayoral account. Feldman signed off on Turner's plan to transfer each individual donation that fell below the city's contribution caps, while Bell believes Turner should only be allowed to move $10,000 in total, which is the maximum amount that any third-party like a political action committee can donate.

Because Turner has $1 million in the bank, he could start the mayoral campaign with a financial head start if he is able to eventually transfer much of that money.

In Wednesday's complaint, Berg reiterates much of the case he has made in court for months, arguing that the legislative history of the city's campaign finance law makes clear that Turner's strategy violates it. Berg also responds to the City's argument, central to its case, that a January federal court decision that declared Houston's blackout period unconstitutional renders Bell's grievance obsolete.

"Mr. Feldman is wrong. The contribution cap reflected in the Ordinance is in no way dependent on the constitutionality of the blackout period," Berg wrote.

Berg is looking for the Ethics Commission to overrule Feldman and declare his interpretations invalid. But that doesn't mean a federal lawsuit, which Bell said was possible immediately following the court hearing, is not still an option.

"It's still on the table, but we wanted to give the commission the opportunity to do the right thing," Berg told the Chronicle Thursday.

Teddy Schleifer covers local politics for the Chronicle, reporting on Houston elections, political strategies and voter demographics in one of the best political news towns in the country.

Teddy previously interned at The New York Times' Washington D.C. bureau and at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He spent his college years at Princeton University, where he edited the news section of The Daily Princetonian and broke the news that David Petraeus was interested in the school's presidency (Paula Broadwell was a source.) Teddy's senior thesis, which empirically tested whether presidential rhetoric made an impact with certain types of voters, won the Lyman H. Atwater Prize as the best thesis in the Politics Department.